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Patient safety
Patient safety is integral to all that we do.
It is fundamental to the provision of high-quality services and we are committed to making the safety of our patients and the quality of their care our highest priority. Our staff take their responsibilities for safety very seriously and we are always seeking to improve your experience.
To achieve this, we support patient safety in many ways.
Serious incidents
We thoroughly investigate serious incidents to ensure lessons are learned to prevent the likelihood of similar incidents happening again.
We have a dedicated Serious Incident (SI) Team who, with support from a clinician, will look at the care and treatment provided by the trust to your loved one to see if there are any lessons to be learnt to prevent incidents happening in the future.
This review concludes with a report and action plan that is shared across the organisation, with the family, the coroner and the South East London Integrated Care Board.
Please see our Serious Investigation Information Leaflet here:
Learning from deaths
We also publish independent investigation reports into serious incidents and any action plans resulting from them here:
Our Mortality Surveillance Committee reviews any deaths that occur involving patients in our care.
You can view our most recent report here:
Previous reports can be viewed here.
Learning from incidents
We try hard to deliver the very best possible services to our patients. However, we know that even with the very best of intentions, sometimes things don’t go as well as we intended.
On the occasions when things do go wrong, it’s really important that we all try to understand what went wrong and how we might try to avoid the same things happening again.
When we have an incident, no matter how minor, or a complaint from a service user or carer, where we have not provided the usual high quality service, we will try to correct what went wrong and learn from what happened.
The National Patient Safety Strategy was published in July 2019 and at Oxleas, we are actively working on:
- upskilling and training our staff to fully understand and embrace patient safety
- employing Patient Safety Partners to ensure that patients and their carers have a voice in high level meetings and in planning services and policy
- learning from incidents
- updating our systems to move to the new platforms that NHS England have formed to collect patient safety data.
For further information see the NHS Patient Safety Strategy.
Contact our Patient Safety team:
Lynda Longhurst, Head of Patient Safety, Patient Experience and Complaints:
Lynda.longhurst@nhs.net
Emma Woods, Patient Safety Lead:
emmawoods1@nhs.net
Caroline Lemilliere, Serious Incident Lead:
caroline.lemilliere@nhs.net
Duty of Candour
We have a duty to be open and transparent when things go wrong and there have been mistakes in a patient’s care that have led to harm.
This is known as the Duty of Candour, and it helps patients to receive accurate, truthful information from hospitals and other healthcare providers. It also sets out some specific requirements that we must follow when things go wrong with care and treatment, including informing people about the incident, providing reasonable support, truthful information and saying sorry.
We are committed to talking to patients and their carers at a very early stage to understand what happened and, where necessary, learn the lessons that will prevent it happening again to improve the safety of our future patients. This is very much part of our culture.
If you have any questions, or you would like to raise a concern, talk to a member of staff in the service concerned. If you are unable to do so, you should contact our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) and they will be able to advise you.
Contact PALS: Freephone 0800 917 7159 or email oxl-tr.pals@nhs.uk. Open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
we’re kind we’re fair we listen we care